Kyle and her husband moved to Brookfield in 1986. She became active in local politics and started blogging in 2004. Her focus is primarily on local issues but often includes state and national topics, too. Kyle looks at things from the taxpayers' perspective in a creative, yet down to earth way, addressing them from a practical point of view.

Have you noticed that this summer was cooler than usual? That fact, coupled with our recent cold and snowy winter, takes the subject of Global Warming off the front burner.

The last time the temperature didn't hit 90 degrees in Milwaukee
during a summer* was in 2000, the weather service said. Before that, it
was 1915.

But without even knowing what the daily highs were, could you tell our days and nights were cooler when compared to other summers? I could. Thanks to lower evening temperatures, we were able to avoid turning on our electricity guzzling air conditioner this summer.

As a gardener, I know this summer has been cooler. Tomatoes, which require warm evening temperatures, are ripening slowly. This spring my peach trees let me know we had a colder than usual winter by producing only 2 blossoms. Essentially all of the flowering buds were frozen out. I haven't had a bumper crop in years.

We may have had a stretch of warmer than usual temperatures in recent years. These fueled the Global Warming argument. Who could forget the summer of 1995? (We were remodeling. The whole east side of our house was open to the elements and mosquitoes. Couldn't run the air.) Remember that summer? We had a number of 100+ days! It was awful.

But the warming trend seems to have turned around, and I think it is taking the wind out of the Global Warming alarmists' sails.

Did you notice how the Global Warming/Climate Change issue was no longer in the limelight at the Democrat convention? There was lots of talk about energy independence and getting off of foreign oil from the Democrats, but not much on reducing carbon footprints, or Global Warming specifically, that I heard.

Barack Obama did not mention Global Warming or even Climate Change in his speech. The closest Obama came
to it was, (my emphasis)

And for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our
planet, I will set a clear goal as President: in ten years, we will
finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East...

...As
President, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal
technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power**... ...And I'll invest 150 billion
dollars over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy
- wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an
investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs
that pay well and can't ever be outsourced.

Al Gore referred to it as climate crisis in his convention speech. But
Gore was not on the prime time coverage I viewed. He is still gung-ho on reducing dependence on big oil and coal, but even Gore did not refer to the term Global Warming--except in reference to McCain backing away from "mandatory caps on global warming pollution" legislation.

The Republicans are off to a slow start with their convention due to hurricane Gustav. Last night Joe Lieberman did mention global warming briefly:

If John McCain was just another go-along partisan politician, he never
would have led the fight to fix our broken immigration system or to do
something about global warming.

I will be listening tonight and tomorrow to the speeches--especially for specific mention or even a hint of Global Warming or Climate Change. I think the whole issue has cooled off in light of the large temperature drop this year and the majority of Americans wanting us to drill domestically. McCain's choosing Sarah Palin from an oil producing state leads me to believe we won't be hearing much about it.

*The article stated that for record keeping purposes, they count summer as being June, July, and August instead of the June 22 - Sept. 22 definition of summer.

**Pretty ironic. The Democrats have been blocking these energy sources in Congress, but now that the American public is demanding domestic drilling, natural gas, clean coal, and nuclear is OK?

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